Anonymous vows revenge

Anonymous Cambodia has pledged to attract more followers and ramp up attacks on government websites in response to the arrest earlier this month of two members of the international “hacktivist” group’s local arm.

“We will start [the attacks] when there are more supporters in order to help release our two members,” says a post on a Facebook page with the group’s name, which was launched on Tuesday and already has gained more than 8,000 “likes”.

“Anonymous around the world will join us in order to topple the government of Cambodia,” the statement warned. “We will not forget about [those] who arrested our members. We will not forgive them and we will continue our work.”

The group lists the National Police website, which announced the previously secret arrests on Tuesday, as a target.

It has also uploaded a video to YouTube purporting to teach new members how to conduct Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that can take websites offline.

“We [will] start 10 times, 1,000 times and 10,000 times stronger than before. From now on there is no end,” another post warns.

Two 21-year-old members of the group were arrested on April 7. Bun King Mongkolpanha, or “Black Cyber”, and Chu Songheng, or “Zoro”, face accusations of computer hacking that can carry prison terms of up to two years.

According to the police statement, Songheng had claimed he had not participated in any attacks and was merely trying to learn hacking skills.

Police say they arrested the pair after eight months of investigation with the help of the US Federal Bureau
of Investigation.

Dim Chaoseng, the pair’s lawyer, said on Tuesday that a trial date had yet to be set and that he hoped to a receive the case file next week.

Chaoseng added that he would seek to convince the judge that his clients were merely students trying to learn about information technology through hacking and so should be re-educated rather than brought to trial.

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